Enigma
by Artistia
Summary: Noun: A person or thing that is puzzling, mysterious or difficult to understand; a riddle or a paradox. Rating for language and suggestive content


**A/N: Hey Ya'll. I decided to give you guys something since I'm taking a break from Something About Red Roses, trust me, the break is needed. I need to plan out some chapters, work on my other stories, things like that. I also wanted to get some one-shots out to keep my creative juices flowing. This wasn't the one that I planned to write, but it came out anyway. The never before seen pairing of Eriko/Yumi, yes, yes I went there. I was originally planning to write a Yoshino/Yumi but a scene crossed my mind and I absolutely had to write it down. I haven't edited this or anything, so any mistakes just deal with them.**

**Please review, this story was very amusing for me to write. It wasn't the Eriko/Yumi that I had been planning either, this was just too perfect to pass up.**

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**Enigma**

I sighed as I left the office building where I worked, rolling my shoulders to ease the tension that came from a full day of work. My boss requested that I stay later today in order to go over the project I had been working on that I was presenting to the board the next day. Walking down the sidewalk at a sedate pace towards the train station to grab a bus home, I paused in front of a shadowy establishment that caught my eye. It was one of those typical American bars that would no doubt be full of patrons trying to forget their lives and problems in the smoke and depression heavy in the air. I had passed by this place every night after work so I'm not sure what made it catch my eye this time. It could be the late hour, the lights flickering behind the dark glass of the windows, or the headache forming behind my eyes that would ease after a glass or two of wine and the lack of the liquid in my house that finally pushed me into entering the business.

As soon as I entered the bar, I realized that my first assumption about the place was correct. Patrons sat in various places inside the building at tables or in booths. Middle aged and older men sat at the bar either staring at the TV screen hanging on the war behind the bar, or into their glasses, trying to find the answers to their problems at the bottom.

I debated with myself for a moment whether to get my drink first or slide into one of those sinfully comfortable looking booths and relax before drinking away my headache, if only to get another one the next morning. I gave into my desires and slid into a booth in the far corner. Placing my briefcase on the seat next to me, I propped my head up on my hands, elbows on the table, shirking all the lessons in manners my mother and Lillian Girl's school instilled within me. I eased my headband, my main style feature that has always been the same, out of my hair and set it on top of my briefcase. Sighing, I ran my fingers through my hair, scratching at my scalp with my nails to try to ease the ache in my head.

"What can I get for you Sugar?" I heard a sultry voice ask from my left. I turned toward the voice and was immediately captured by a pair of mysterious chocolate brown eyes. I must've been staring for too long because the woman attached to those eyes said something else.

"I'm sorry?" I croaked out, trying to figure out what it was about those eyes that stirred my interest so much.

The woman smirked in what I assumed was amusement and repeated her question. "What can I get for you?"

"Oh um, red wine please," I requested, my traitorous eyes tracing over the figure in front of me.

She nodded and flashed me a sultry, seductive smile that made my chest tighten and my breath catch in my throat. When she turned and walked back towards the bar, I was able to better… appreciate her figure. She had long, thick chestnut colored hair that hung in waves down her back. She wore a red-plaid flannel shirt over a black tank top that appeared a size too small for her and a pair of shorts that showed off her luscious thighs and perfect ass wonderfully. She strutted around the bar in a pair of knee-high black leather boots that added to her height and increased her sex appeal. I shook my head at my thoughts, wondering where they had come from. I had never inclined that way, unlike my fellow former Lillian graduates who, more often than not, swung that way.

Before my thoughts could drift off any further, the mysterious and sexy waitress was back and placing a glass of red wine on a napkin in front of me. I opened my mouth to say thank you, but ended up staring in confusion when the woman slid into the booth across from me, a glass of scotch in her hand.

She took a sip of her drink, then stared at me from across the rim of her glass. "Never thought I'd see you in a place like this Eriko-san," she said, startling me.

"How do you know me?" I asked, trying to tamp down my insufferable attraction to this strange and mysterious woman in front of me.

The woman laughed, a rich and smoky sound that made my insides quiver and my lust for her increase. "I should be surprised that you don't recognized me, but truthfully I'm not. I have changed quite a lot since the last time we saw each other, and the way I used to be, well, I wouldn't be anywhere near here either," she replied, her brown eyes staring into my own.

I realized as I was gazing into liquid pools of chocolate that, even though they were dark and mysterious, they were also familiar. Wracking my brain to remember where I had seen her before, another flash of chocolate eyes flitted across my memory. "Yumi-chan," I gasped, "Is that you?"

She smiled briefly, flashing perfectly straight white teeth before her smile transformed into a smirk. "Your surprise is evident in your voice Eriko-san," she said, taking another sip of her scotch.

"You've changed," I stated, studying her form, my eyes lingering on her breasts straining against the confines of her tank top before returning her gaze, "What happened to you?"

The other girl shrugged. "Life," she answered before standing back up. "I have to get back to work," she nodded towards the bar, "It has been lovely to see you though Eriko-san."

I watched her while she worked. It seemed like she was the only one here working as she attended drinks at the bar, as well as cleaned off tables. I had two glasses of wine while I observed her, trying to figure out what was it about her that had changed so drastically. Her figure didn't really surprise me as the last time I had seen her she was still in high school and still developing. Now she was in her mid twenties and it is clear that she was one of those late bloomers, gaining breasts and a figure after leaving the security of high school. It was her attitude, her very manner that surprised me the most. Long gone was the blushing, shy girl with ever changing expressions that I remembered, and in her place was a mysterious and extremely seductive woman.

I finished my two glasses and left the appropriate amount on the table, nodding towards the woman plaguing my thoughts as I left. She was an enigma, a puzzle, and there is nothing I love more than a puzzle.

It was a few weeks before I felt the need to return to the bar. Like before, there were a few people dotted around the room in singles or pairs, content to keep to themselves and not even bothering to look at the other occupants of the dingy bar.

I sat in the same booth as last time, sighing as I felt the cool leather seep through my business suit. Yumi appeared at my side minutes after I sat down, wearing pretty much the same thing she had been wearing the first time I saw her. "What can I get for you Sugar?" Her smooth, smoky voice asked.

I had closed my eyes when she first spoke, her voice easing my senses like the soft brush of a hand. I opened them again when I realized she had finished speaking. "Red wine please, Yumi-chan."

She walked back towards the bar, disappearing behind it to pull out the correct bottle. Minutes later, she reappeared walking towards my table with my glass of wine in her right hand and her own glass of scotch in her left.

Yumi placed the red wine in front of me and slid into the booth across from me, sipping on her drink. "So what do you want to know?" She asked when she sat her glass down.

"What do you mean?" I asked her, taking a sip of my own drink, the slightly bitter red liquid sliding down the back of my throat.

"I know you Eriko-san," she returned, "Your curious nature is probably screaming right now for answers as to why I am here, working in a bar."

"It has crossed my mind a few times since I saw you a few weeks ago," I admitted, "But maybe I just like experiencing a mystery instead of just straight out solving one."

Yumi smirked and we sat in comfortable silence, sipping our drinks. "I own this place," she said after a few minutes, "this bar I mean. I was really good friends with the former owner and he wanted to retire so he turned the place over to me."

I nodded my head and finished off my glass of wine. She finished her scotch and stood up. "Another glass?" She asked, "I have to get back to work."

"Yes please," I answered. Just before she walked out of hearing ranged, I asked, "What made you decide to run this place?"

She threw me a smile and a wink over her shoulder, "Just wanted to do something different." She brought me another glass of wine and went back to work manning the bar, refilling drinks and mixing new ones.

I drank the second glass and left money on the table to head home, taking one last look at the woman behind the bar.

I dropped into the bar a few more times over the next couple weeks. I couldn't seem to stay away from the younger woman. We developed a routine every time I came. I would order a red wine and she would sit with me while I drank my first glass, sipping at her own scotch. When I finished my first glass, she would return to behind the bar and I would watch her while she worked. It seemed like Yumi pretty much ran the place by herself, but every now and then I saw a few waitresses working on the busier nights and a big guy that blended into the shadows at the end of the bar.

After a particularly difficult and mentally grueling day at work, I found myself slumping into Yumi's bar. I sighed as I slid into my normal both, unbuttoning my suit jacket along the way in order to get more comfortable. I leaned my head back against the cool leather, trying to ease the pounding in my head. I heard a light chuckle and a clink of glass. Opening my eyes, I saw the grinning brunette across from me. "Hard day?" She asked, pushing my glass of wine in front of me.

"You have no idea," I groaned, taking a hard gulp of the red liquid in front of me. "Thanks Yumi-chan."

She smiled sardonically at me. "You know you can call me just Yumi, we are familiar with each other by now."

I smirked back at her, "Well then I insist you call me Eriko."

We sat in silence while I drank my wine and she sipped on her scotch. I eyed her from over my wine glass, taking in her full lips and long dark eyelashes. I'd come to grips that I was attracted to the younger girl who I realized that none of us really knew. She was mysterious, an enigma, and I'm always attracted to enigmas. I finished my first glass of wine but instead of standing up and moving back to the bar like she usually did, Yumi remained seated.

"Do you want another glass of wine?" She asked, motioning towards one of the waitresses.

The waitress brought me another glass of wine and nodded her head at her boss. "Not working tonight?" I asked her once the waitress went back to behind the bar.

"The owner is allowed to have a night off every now," Yumi answered, still sipping at her scotch. Part of me wonders if she's ever finished the glasses she has with me.

"Well then," I said, leaning back and stretching out in the booth, "I guess I'll just have to stay longer then."

Copying my movements, Yumi smirked back at me, "I guess you will."

We sat talking about various things, what I was doing at work, the people Yumi had encountered that day, the regulars she had gotten to know really well. We never talked about the past though; it wasn't a conscious effort on either of our parts, it was just something that never really came up.

I ended up staying until well after closing. Since I didn't have to work the next day, I didn't feel bad for staying out so late. "One last glass of wine for the road?" Yumi asked as she held up an almost empty bottle of wine.

"Why not?" I replied, "I don't have to work tomorrow, so it won't matter if I indulge a little tonight."

Yumi pulled out another glass and poured what was left of the wine in the bottle into it. "I think I'll join you," Yumi said, pulling out some bourbon.

I quirked up my eyebrow at the whiskey. "Tired of scotch?" I asked, sipping my wine.

"Well you did say we were indulging didn't you?" Yumi asked moving around next to me on the other side of the bar, leaning against it next to the stool I was seated on. We sipped at our respective drinks for a while before Yumi spoke again. "You know a few weeks ago when you first came in here," she started, not looking at me, "You asked me what I was doing here, how I ended up here anyway."

I nodded, not speaking. "Do you know what I've been doing since high school?" Yumi asked.

"I know that you were dating Sachiko for awhile," I answered, "But she got married didn't she?"

"Yeah," Yumi sighed, running her hands through her long chestnut colored hair. "I tried to get her to reconsider that decision but she went ahead with it anyway. I wasn't as broken up about it as people thought I was going to be; sure I loved Sachiko, but looking back I don't think she was the one for me."

"So what got you here?" I asked, "Owning a bar."

"Ah, well, that was my next foray into the serious dating world," she supplied, "I went to college, majoring in life. I dated a few people, never getting into a serious relationship, not one like I had with Sachiko anyway. Of course, that was until Shimako and I started dating."

I almost spit out the wine I was drinking at that. "You and Shimako dated? How did that come about?"

"One thing led to another," was her answer, "We dated for over a year, I thought she was it for me."

I could hear the 'but' in her statement and decided to voice it, "But…"

"But apparently she didn't. She cheated on me with her ex Noriko-chan."

It was hard for me to picture the sweet angelic girl I knew as a cheater, but at the same time, it was hard for me to rationalize the petite brunette I knew as a sultry, seductive bar owner. "And that's how you ended up in a bar?" I asked.

Yumi nodded, "I was pretty broken up over the whole thing. I ended up in this bar drowning my sorrows, like so many others who come here now. I forged a relationship with the bar owner and started working here. I dropped out of college since I didn't have a clear path anyway. My family gave up on me and my friends pretty much took Shimako's side in our break-up, not believing she could be the type to cheat."

I'm not sure if it was sympathy for her story or the building lust I've had for her since I first laid eyes on her, but I felt something stirring in my stomach, my heart, that caused me to lean in and attach my lips to hers. I couldn't tell if she was surprised by actions or not, but she kissed me back.

I separated our lips for just a moment before kissing her with a ferocity that I didn't know that I had. With the added height that her boots gave her, she was just a little taller than I was, but that didn't stop my hands from running all over the body, this enigma, that I couldn't get out of my mind the past couple weeks.

The kiss and the ones that followed were not slow tender meetings of lips that just admitted their owners were attracted to each other; they were fierce representations of people trying to lose and find themselves all at the same time. It was a class of teeth, tongue and the remnants of the alcohol we had been drinking the whole night. She tasted of bourbon with a hint of scotch underlying the flavor while I know I tasted of bitter wine. My hands fisted in thick wavy hair, tugging on it to bring her closer to me. Her hands wound their way around my waist; one settled on my rib cage just bellow my breast, the other settled on my ass. She had propped one foot back up against the bar and I became very aware that I pressed firmly up against her in between her very strong, very naked thighs.

Yumi broke the kiss this time, leaning back hair rumpled and out of control. Our chests heaved for breath as our eyes met, lust evident our gazes. "I have an apartment above the bar," Yumi whispered, her lips grazing mine.

I nodded, conceding to the unspoken request that our bodies were asking of us. The bar already locked up, the brunette only had to place are used glasses in the dishwasher and she was leading me out the back door and up a flight of stairs to her door. Once the door was closed, I had pushed the younger girl back up against it, furiously claiming her lips as my own again and pulling vicious at the paid shirt, dark blue this time, and black tank top that had been haunting and taunting me for weeks.

While I was struggling to divest her of her tight clothing, Yumi was working on getting me out of my business suit, which had significantly more layers than her business attire, and backing me towards what I assumed was her bedroom. When I finally worked the brunette out of her shirt, I realized that the younger girl wasn't wearing a bra. "Do you always work without a bra?" I whispered, caressing the breasts in front of me.

"Get more tip money," she gasped out before finally succeeding in pulling off my dress shirt. Before she had a chance to continue what she was doing, I spun her around and pushed her back on the bed that I had felt behind me. I tugged her boots off and stripped her of her sinfully short shorts, realizing that she was going completely commando. I grinned in success as I finally had my enigma bared out before me, but I wasn't satisfied. I could see everything, literally everything, the swell of her breasts as they jiggled a little with every breath she took, the dip in her well toned stomach and the muscles quivering around her most private place, but it wasn't enough just seeing, I had to experience it, had to experience my own personal enigma.

I caressed her, and stroked her, softly and harshly, tender and hard. She took all I had to give and rewarded me with her gasps and cries of pleasure. It was my first time with a woman, but I always succeeded at what I set out to do. I took her to pleasures and peaks higher than any could imagine. I let her teeter merciless on the edge of pleasure before giving her that extra nudge that sent her crashing over the cliff into a boneless mass.

I fell in a heap next to her, trying to catch my breath. "I think," Yumi gasped out, looking over at me, "That you still have on way to many clothes." She was on top of me the next minute, pulling the rest of my clothing off to land in a wrinkled jumbled in the graveyard of clothes we left in between here and the front door. I felt like I was on fire everywhere her finger tips brushed against me. I felt like I was dying and I honestly didn't care, what a way to go. I didn't just crash over the edge, I made the non-existent and wave over wave of pleasure raced through my body.

"Whatever happened to Yamanobe-san?" Yumi asked me later after we had both recovered.

I sighed, my fingers curling in and around the strands of long chestnut colored hair that lay across my breast from where Yumi's head was resting near my shoulder, "I pursued him of course. He was a mystery to me, something strange and fascinating that I wanted to hold onto. However, the more I got to know of him, the more bored with him I got. It's just like when you first start a jigsaw puzzle, you're really eager to finish the puzzle, but once it's finished, there's nothing left to do but take it apart and put it back in the box. You've already solved it, so there's no desire to solve it again."

I felt rather than heard Yumi laugh, the soft breaths washing over my skin, causing me to break out in goose bumps. "Youko-sama did tell me one time that you were attract to strange things," she said, propping herself up to look down at me, "So what does that make me hmm?"

I reached up and flipped her over so that she was beneath me again. "You my dear," I said, pressing our bodies together and moaning at the contact, "Are an enigma that was just asking for me to mess with."

I woke up hours later to the sun warmly playing across my face. I shifted my hand around and quickly realized that I was alone in bed. Slowly I sat up, pulling the sheet with me to cover my breasts. I located Yumi sitting sideways on a wide window ledge smoking a cigarette and wearing nothing but my dress shirt.

"You're wearing my shirt," I mumbled to her, wiping he sleep from my eyes and scratching at my hair, realizing that my headband had come off sometime in the night.

Yumi turned her head toward me and took another drag of her cigarette and blew a puff of smoke at me. "Well you're sleeping in my bed," she returned, swinging the leg that wasn't propped up on the window seat softly back and forth.

Abandoning any sense of decency and propriety considering the night we shared last night, I got up and moved towards her naked as the day I was born. I sat behind the younger woman, placing my legs on either side of her body and pulled her slightly clothed form back into my naked one. "I didn't know you smoked," I commented as I rested my head on her shoulder, smiling at the slight scent of my perfume and body lotion on her.

"I don't, not really, only on certain occasions I guess," she answered, taking another puff before putting the cigarette out on the windowsill.

"Such as?" I asked, nipping at her jawline a little.

"Such as having my brains banged out of my skull," Yumi replied twisting her head so that her lips met mine.

"So have you solved me yet?" She asked when we separated, "Have you solved the puzzle that is Yumi?"

I remembered the conversation about Yamanobe-san that we had last night, and realized what she meant with her question. "You aren't a puzzle," I told her honestly, "You're an enigma, one that'll probably take an entire life-time to solve."

She smirked and raised an eyebrow at me. "An entire lifetime," she murmured, "That sounds ominous."

"Just be prepared to be stuck with me for a long time," I said smiling, lips pressing against every inch of skin I could reach, "Once I find something truly fascinating, I never let it go."

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**Review please!**

**A/N: Also note that I'm not a fan of drinking or smoking, since I'm allergic to the latter, but it went well with the scene. I'm not continuing this, so don't ask for a sequel. If someone wants to expand on this story, I will type up the notes I made to develop their characters for the piece better and send them. This is as far as I'm going with this one though, it's a one shot for a reason right. Amusing to write for a while, but I'd get tired of it quickly**


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